Yapmo, an internal communication program designed to replace inefficient group communications, has unexpectedly found a niche in the real estate sector. Agents are using it to help sellers price their houses and, in some cases, to actually sell properties before they are listed.

Atlanta Fine Homes Sotheby's International hasn't sold any houses using the intuitive software program since switching to it in July as a way to streamline internal communication. But just the other day, says broker David Boehmig, an agent in his firm used it to properly price a potential listing so it would sell more quickly.

But Chicago's largest residential brokerage, @properties, has been using the system since Jan. 1. And in that time, Kevin Van Eck, director of agent development, estimates that 275 properties have been sold thanks to the software -- without ever being placed on the local multiple listing service.

The main purpose of the Yapmo -- techie shorthand for talk, or yap, mobile -- wasn't to validate pricing, or even sell houses. Rather, it was to replace ineffective company communication systems and allow emails to be used more effectively.

But it turned out that "it works extremely well" in the real estate sector, says Paul Everton, CEO of the Chicago software company. And as far as listings and sales go, Everton says, "It just hit me from left field."

Yapmo describes itself as a mobile software company which builds workflow tools that allow a company's employees to work more efficiently and communicate smarter. It claims its tools boost productivity, increase sales and accelerate ideas.

@properties bought into the program for just that reason. It went into business eight years ago implementing web- and email-based technologies that enabled the company to out-maneuver its competitors and become Chicago's largest brokerage, with 13 offices in the city and suburbs and some 1,200 agents.

But fast-forward to 2013, and the same technologies that allowed the company to move quickly and prosper have become a burden. Some emails, for example, were copied to 20 different people, whether they needed the messages or not. And in the process, key messages from company owners and brokers were getting lost.

"Emails have been a huge benefit in being able to collaborate," says Van Eck of @properties. "But now I get 300 a day and only four actually apply to me."

Yapmo says the typical employee spends 13 hours a week in their email inboxes, and real estate agents are no different. But by using the firm's intuitive software, @properties has been able to eliminate some 75,000 emails a year from every agent's inbox.

That means agents no longer have to fool with superfluous emails selling Viagra, unwanted notices about office pools, and other non-work-related messages. That frees them up to spend more time listing houses, showing and selling properties, and attending closings.

Agents found that the software allowed them to "preview" possible listings with their fellow agents, and market them internally before they hit the open market.

That's a form of so-called "pocket listings," which are somewhat controversial in and of themselves.

With a pocket listing, a property for sale is held out of the local MLS while the seller's agent shops it among his own list of clients and friends. If the agent finds a buyer, he gets to keep the entire commission rather than sharing it with a buyer's agent.

But while a house is in the agent's pocket, so to speak, it is not exposed to the entire market, as it would be if it was listed on the MLS. And in theory, at least, if the house was listed, the seller might have been able to secure a higher price.

Under the rules of most MLS systems, a property must be listed within 48 hours of receiving a signed listing agreement. So a true pocket listing is only a short-term ploy at best.

But the Yapmo software makes the process more efficient. Agents are able to automatically shop the property in-house directly to buyers and other agents who have expressed an interest in that kind of house, that price range or perhaps that particular location.

It isn't intended to limit exposure to keep the deal in-house, according to Van Eck. Rather, it is intended to maximize exposure during the "downtime" between when a listing is taken and the house is ready to show.

"Nothing in the MLS defines what people are looking for," says Boehmig, the Atlanta broker. "But with this tool, a conversation can ensue while a house is getting ready to come on the market. Our agents can say, 'I want to hear about that kind of stuff but not that kind of stuff.'"

Yapmo also works well for sellers who don't know what their homes are worth, or for those who value their privacy and don't want to tell the world that they are getting ready to put their properties on the market -- or what price they are asking.

"One of our agents just took a listing but was concerned about the price," says Boemig. "He was able to email other agents in the company saying, 'Here's what the seller is thinking. What do you think?' And when the house actually came on the market, it was positioned properly to sell."

Anyone thinking of skating on mortgages owned by either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac may want to think again. As a result of new government reports, the two companies say they are going to do a better job of going after scofflaws.

Fannie and Freddie can pursue judgments against borrowers who walk away from their loans even though they have the ability to make their payments. That's called a strategic default, and many borrowers are taking that step -- typically throwing in the towel because their homes are no longer worth as much as they owe.

But when their homes are sold at foreclosure and the proceeds are not enough to cover their outstanding loan balances, it creates a deficiency for which many defaulters either don't realize they are liable or don't care.

To date, the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), which are now highly profitable after five years of running in the red, haven't done a particularly good job at pursuing deficiency judgements, according to scathing reports from the Office of the Inspector General at the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

But the FHFA says it is going to make the GSEs clean up their acts. And that should serve as fair warning to those who can pay but fail to do so.

As the OIG says time and again in the reports, chasing down strategic defaulters can not only cut the enterprises' losses on bad loans but can also "serve as a deterrent to those who would chose to strategically default on their mortgage obligations."

Going after strategic defaulters is big money. According to the OIG report criticizing Freddie Mac's lax practices, the company has left billions on the table.

The report found that Freddie Mac, which has received some $71 billion in taxpayer assistance since it was taken into conservatorship by the FHFA in September 2008, did not refer nearly 58,000 foreclosures with estimated deficiencies of some $4.6 billion for collection by its vendors.

Of course, only a percentage of that amount might have been recoverable because some borrowers are simply tapped out. But because the bad loans weren't even considered for recovery, Freddie Mac "eliminated any possibility" for collecting what is owed, the OIG said.

Now extrapolate that to Freddie Mac's entire holdings and you can see we're talking some really big money here. As of last December, the big secondary mortgage market company had nearly 50,000 foreclosures still on its books, carrying a value of some $4.3 billion. And as of March 31, it held 364,000 mortgages that were 60 days or more delinquent and were, therefore, likely foreclosure candidates.

Fannie Mae's portfolio of troubled assets is much larger. At the end of last year, it owned more than 105,000 foreclosed properties valued at $9.5 billion and carried a "substantial" shadow inventory of 576,000 seriously delinquent mortgages that were 90 days late or more and likely to end up in foreclosure.

It does a better job than the smaller Freddie Mac, according to the OIG. But in a separate report, Fannie Mae earned a slap on the wrist for not taking any action on nearly 30,000 accounts because statutes of limitations had expired or were about to. For the same reason, the report says, it failed to pursue deficiencies of some 15,000 accounts that already had been reviewed for collection by its vendors.

Several factors influence the decision to pursue deficiency recoveries. But most importantly, state laws dictate timelines for filing claims. Some states do not allow deficiency judgments at all, but they are fair game in 35 states, including the District of Columbia. However, 10 have short windows -- only 30 to 180 days in which collections are allowed.

But not going after defaulters where it is permissible to do so not only reduces the chances of recovering potentially billions, the reports point out, it "incentivizes" other borrowers to walk away from mortgages they can afford to pay.

The new OIG reports are a follow-up to one issued a year ago that called the FHFA, the agency which oversees the two GSEs, on the carpet for failing to provide enough guidance about effectively pursuing and collecting deficiency judgements wherever and whenever possible.

In September, in response to a draft of these latest reports, the agency set down requirements for both enterprises to maintain formal policies and procedures for managing their deficiency collection processes, establish a set of controls to monitor their collection vendors and comply with state laws in an effort to preserve their ability to pursue collections.

And by the first of the year, the FHFA said it will begin to more closely monitor the effectiveness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's deficiency judgement processes. That's government-speak for, "We'll be watching you from now on, so you'd better get your collection house in order."

"The devil made me do it" was perhaps the most famous catch phrase of comedian Flip Wilson. And it was among the numerous excuses one potential borrower gave his lender to explain his lousy credit report.

The 10-page letter of explanation ranged from hurting his back while he was in the military to having gout to having a poor relationship with his daughter because his father had multiple children with multiple women.

But perhaps his best absolution was this: "I was married to the devil. I should have known that, because my marriage license number was 666."

This kind of creative rationale might have worked during the mortgage market heyday a decade ago, when you could secure financing if you could draw a breath. Nowadays, though, underwriters don't want excuses. Heck, things are so tight they might not even give you a chance to explain away a blip in your credit record.

But that doesn't stop people from trying, as educator Karen Deis found out recently when she asked her mortgage market clients to report some of the strangest letters of explanation they've received from borrowers.

Deis, who operates MortgageCurrency.com, a website that keeps loan officers, processors and underwriters abreast of changes in lending guidelines and rules, has been on the receiving end of a couple of doozies.

In one that made her chuckle, the man explained that he had to file for bankruptcy when a restaurant venture with his daughter failed. He bought the place with his daughter, he explained, so she could help him and teach him how to run it when he retired.

Besides the fact that you can't explain away such a financial failure, there was this little kicker: The daughter was a mere 9 years old.

And then there was the woman who told Deis that her credit record was perfect. It just had to be, she explained, because she paid all her bills through collection agencies -- and she always paid on time.

Here are some of the best -- or should I say worst -- of the suspect excuses Deis has managed to collect:

-- The borrower, a woman who had had a sex change operation, said her bad debts didn't count because they were incurred when she was a man.

-- Another woman wrote that she was overextended because she had to pay for her cat's chemotherapy treatments.

-- Another reasoned that since she had filed for bankruptcy in January and this was March, she was starting over with a clean slate. So what was the problem?

-- Similarly, a man who was repeatedly more than 90 days late on his bills wondered why such a record was questionable. "I simply choose to make quarterly payments," he explained.

-- A woman said a medical condition caused her to have multiple late pays on her credit record. She went on to explain that she experienced anxiety attacks when she opened her mail, so on the advice of her physician, she didn't pay any bills that were snail-mailed to her.

Besides, she added, that was years ago and she now pays her bills online.

-- Another borrower also used a medical malady as his excuse for his spotty bill-paying record. This time, it was that he had been diagnosed as having multiple personalities, and one of these other characters was responsible for paying all the bills.

-- Said one guy who has late on his gasoline credit card: "I got a load of bad gas."

-- Likewise, there was this explanation from someone who was late on his car loan: It was a bad car, so he took it back to the dealer.

-- Another disgruntled car buyer said he, too, returned a lemon to the dealer. As an explanation, he offered that the salesman made him buy the car, that the dealer discriminated against him and that the monthly payment was too high.

Interestingly, the same borrower had had three previous cars repossessed over a three-year period.

-- Why did one borrower run up the balances on her credit cards, to the point where she could not make the payments? Because she was "guaranteed" to win the lottery, of course.